Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 16, 1995 TAG: 9507150001
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: F-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Race is not as central as it is to the debate over, say, affirmative action, which arose as a remedy for erasing centuries of discrimination against black Americans.
But race is there, in the arguments over crime and the other issues, informed by the hard reality that nonwhites are disproportionately represented not only in stereotypes and prejudices, but also in fact among crime's perpetrators (as well as victims), among the poor, among those on welfare.
For the persistence of this socioeconomic disparity, some blame continued white racism. Others blame the very public policies intended to help remove the disparity. Quite clearly, many factors are involved. One that doesn't get enough attention is disparate levels of physical health.
Infant mortality is, of course, a tragedy in itself. But it is also an indicator of more general conditions, as Paul L. Puryear noted in a monograph published earlier this year by the University of Virginia's Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service, where he is a professor.
"[The infant-mortality rate] is quite responsive to changes in social and economic conditions; it reflects the quality and quantity of factors like sanitation, access to medical care, parents' education (especially that of the mother), housing conditions, income and nutrition," Puryear wrote in his piece on minorities' health in Virginia from 1960 to 1990.
Thus, the fact that the 1990 infant-mortality rate among nonwhite Virginians was 2.3 times the rate among white Virginians points to differences in the conditions into which the average nonwhite vs. white baby is born.
Moreover, the gap in 1990 was greater than it had been 30 years earlier, when the nonwhite infant-mortality rate was 1.8 times the white rate. Infant deaths dropped among both groups from 1960 to 1990, but at a faster pace among whites than nonwhites. The drop in infant-mortality rates for both whites and nonwhites continued through 1993, according to figures released since publication of Puryear's monograph, but with the death rate for nonwhite babies in 1993 still about 2.2 times the rate for white babies.
With few exceptions, similar disparities emerge in statistics about other diseases and disabilities; some of the exceptions disappear when age is taken into account.
The bottom line: At 76.3 years, life expectancy for white Virginians is nearly five years longer than for nonwhite Virginians, at 71.5.
Except that length of life isn't the only bottom line of good health. Another is quality and productivity of life. Puryear quotes from a report of the National Research Council: "Health is not only an important 'good' in itself, it is also a determinant of life options... . Lack of prenatal care leads to greater likelihood of ... developmental impairment. Childhood illness and unhealthy conditions can reduce learning potential; impaired health or chronic disability in adults contributes to low earning capacity ...; chronic poor health among older adults can lead to premature retirement...."
Poor health, in other words, is both product and cause of poor living conditions. To break the cycle is to intervene with better prenatal and childhood health care; to do that may well be to make a major advance against some of the state's and nation's most stubborn social problems.
by CNB